Abstract

A theory of primary interactions between elementary particles is proposed. It is based on the hypothesis that there are three primary interactions: weak, electromagnetic, and strong; and each of them is characterized by a single coupling constant. The primary weak interactions couple the leptons to themselves and to vector and axial vector fields, but not to nucleons. The primary electromagnetic interactions couple the electromagnetic field to the charged leptons or to the neutral vector meson fields, but not to nucleons. The primary strong interactions couple the vector and axial vector fields to the nucleons. All the couplings are universal. On the basis of this theory it is possible to account quantitatively for the anomalous magnetic moments of the nucleons, the ratio of the Gamow –Teller and the Fermi β decay coupling constants, weak magnetism, absence of neutral lepton currents, pion-decay, pion-nucleon scattering lengths, and the principal features of the nuclear force. The theory when extended to strange particles, leads automatically to the suppression of weak decays of strange particles. Our older chirality invariant V –A four-fermion interaction is recovered as the effective interaction for small momentum transfers. No intermediate bosons in the conventional sense are required or expected. The application to the absolute calculation of electromagnetic mass shifts and non-leptonic decay rates yields finite answers which will be discussed in another paper.

Footnotes

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